History and chronicle, by B. Croce.--History as a system, by J. Ortega y Gasset.--The idea of history, by R. G. Collingwood.--The historian's purpose; history and metahistory, by A. Bullock.--What are historians trying to do? By H. Pirenne.--What are historical facts? By C. Becker.--The concept of scientific history, by I. Berlin.--Reason in history, by G. W. F. Hegel.--The hedgehog and the fox, by I. Berlin.--What is history? By E. H. Carr.--Faith and history, by R. Niebuhr.--The world and the west, by A. (...) Toynbee.--Debates with historians, by P. Geyl.--Has history any meaning? By K. R. Popper.--Historical inevitability, by I. Berlin.--On fortune and misfortune in history, by J. Burckhardt.--Selected readings (p. 179-181). (shrink)

Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

Since Mueller’s 1958 article calling Hegelian dialectics a “legend,” it has been fashionable to deny that Hegel used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. But in truth, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit has 28 dialectics hidden on four outline levels, and The Philosophy of History has 10 more on three outline levels. In Phenomenology’s macrodialectic, Hegel’s nonsupernatural Spirit–all reality, everything in the universe, including man and artificial objects–advances from unconscious + union (thesis) to conscious + separation (antithesis) to a synthesis of conscious (from the antithesis) (...) + union (from the thesis). Previous interpretations of Phenomenology have missed this dialectic: they have assumed that Spirit’s journey begins with consciousness, whereas the journey actually begins in the primordial state of nature, before man arrives and provides Spirit with its Mind (the collective mind of man). Mind then misperceives itself as a multitude of separate alien “objects”–things other than itself. The macrodialectic and all other dialectics are based on Christianity’s Johannine separation-and-return mythology; all Hegelian dialectics separate from a concept in the thesis, going to that something’s opposite (antithesis), and then return to the thesis concept. Thus, in Hegel’s master-and-slave dialectic (God = master, man = slave), man advances from potential + freedom to actual + bondage (religiosity) to actual + freedom (atheism). Only Marx and Tillich understood Hegelian dialectics. Marx’s basic dialectic (one of four) saw history separating from and returning to Communism, going from communal ownership + poverty (primitive communism, or gens) to private ownership + wealth (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) to communal ownership + wealth (final communism). Tillich’s basic dialectic (one of many) separates from and returns to God, advancing from Yes to God + Yes to supernaturalism (theism) to No to God + No to supernaturalism (atheism) to Yes to God + No to supernaturalism (humanism: humanity is the nonsupernatural “God above the God of theism”). (shrink)

The author offers perspectives that can assist healthcare managers in achieving the highest ethical standards as they face their roles as healthcare providers, employers, and community service organizations. He also examines how to comply with relevant laws and regulations, provide high quality patient care with limited resources, and more.

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Analyzes the meaning expressed in music, the social and psychological sources of meaning, and the methods of musical communication This is a book meant for ...

Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: first, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems (...) capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful AI will be built. Fourth, because disempowering humanity is useful for a large range of misaligned goals, such AI will try to disempower humanity. If AI is capable of disempowering humanity and tries to disempower humanity by 2100, then humanity will be disempowered by 2100. This conclusion has immense moral and prudential significance. (shrink)

The sensible and conflicting scenario of the pandemic postulated many challenges to societies around the world in 2020. Part of this problem refers to how the differences between politics and science are not comprehended in their particularities. The recognition of limits and power of science and politics can not only contribute to reaching the actions and strategies facing novel coronavirus but also optimized many domains of society.

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

With the progress of science we become more and more aware of the undiscovered, and of our feebleness to visualize or express what is dimly known to us. Geologists estimate that man evolved some 1,000,000 years ago on an earth which astronomers say is some 2,000,000,000 years old. Caution is required in accepting such figures, for we must remember how far out Lord Kelvin was in estimating the age of the earth—before the discovery of radium. Man has been civilized for (...) some 5,000 years, and Galileo, with his telescope and revolutionary ideas, lived some 300 years ago. There may be, we are told, a million million years before the sun grows weak and the earth becomes farther from the sun so that all life freezes. Long before this man may use up the metals available for his machines, and those ready sources of energy now so wastefully used, by which he at present multiplies and swarms in cities. In such case he will return through birth control or famine, or both, to a simple, uncrowded, pastoral existence. There is little likelihood of his being able to use atomic energy, other than that which reaches the earth as sun radiation and is available directly or as energy stored in water-power, wood, coal, and oil. (shrink)

The science of animal consciousness investigates (i) which animal species are conscious (the distribution question) and (ii) how conscious experience differs in detail between species (the quality question). We propose a framework which clearly distinguishes both questions and tackles both of them. This two-tier account distinguishes consciousness along ten dimensions and suggests cognitive capacities which serve as distinct operationalizations for each dimension. The two-tier account achieves three valuable aims: First, it separates strong and weak indicators of the presence of consciousness. (...) Second, these indicators include not only different specific contents but also differences in the way particular contents are processed (by processes of learning, reasoning or abstraction). Third, evidence of consciousness from each dimension can be combined to derive the distinctive multi-dimensional consciousness profile of various species. Thus, the two-tier account shows how the kind of conscious experience of different species can be systematically compared. (shrink)

Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze.

Apresenta-se uma análise fílmica do videodocumentário Roda o Tererê com vistas a investigar se e como o filme dirigido pela cineasta brasileira Lilian Solá Santiago contribui para uma descolonização do olhar, da estética e da política das imagens. Interessa identificar até que ponto o videodocumentário tensiona o regime de visibilidade dominante na sociedade nacional problematizado por teóricos localizados fora do eixo cultural da Europa. Conclui-se que, ao inscrever-se enquanto cineasta, Lilian Santiago não transforma a sua câmera apenas em voz; transforma (...) o microfone em ouvido, e faz dele uma caixa de ressonância para que as pessoas ouçam e vejam aqueles que vem sendo historicamente apagados dos espaços do aparecer. (shrink)

Understanding cultural evolution is one of the most challenging and indispensable scientific tasks for the survival of humankind on our planet. This task demands, besides an adoption of theories and models from biological evolution, theories for culture-specific processes as well. Language evolution and language acquisition offer interesting objects of study in this respect. (Published Online November 9 2006).

The young Martin Buber was so much taken by the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche that at the age of 17 he undertook a translation of the work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" into Polish. Even though the project had to be abandoned, Buber's enthusiasm for Nietzsche did not wane and traces of his influence are to be found in the different stages of his thought. The article shows how Buber came to introduce a Nietzschean perspective into the nascent Zionist movement. In fact, (...) Martin Buber's sharing in the vision of a reawakening of the Jewish people to its long-slumbering life-force was very much marked by the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche. The influence of the author of the "Zarathustra" upon Buber was particularly attached to the renewed concept of culture that was operative in the early stages of the Zionistic movement. /// Ainda durante a vida de Nietzsche, o jovem Martin Buber sentiu-se de tal maneira atraído pelo pensamento do autor do livro "Assim Falava Zarathustra" que, quando apenas tinha 17 anos de idade, deu início a uma tradução desta obra para Polaco, da qual, contudo, apenas concluiria a primeira parte, pois logo se apercebeu de que idêntica tradução tinha sido já encomendada a outra pessoa. O entusiasmo de Buber por Nietzsche, contudo, não esmoreceu, de tal forma que se podem encontrar traços da sua influência em cada uma das diferentes fases de evolução do seu pensamento. O presente artigo mostra até que ponto foi graças a Buber que uma certa perspectiva nietzschiana acabou por se introduzir no movimento zionista nascente. Foi sob a influência de Nietzsche, com efeito, que se deu a adesão de Buber à ideia de que era necessário retirar o povo judeu do seu adormecimento histórico e do esquecimento da sua própria forçavital. Essa influência, contudo, encontra-se sobretudo impressa no conceito de cultura que haveria de marcar a fase inicial do movimento zionista. (shrink)

_Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze._.

"Gives readers a glimpse into the unseen work and overlooked history of the renowned Saint Louis Zoo. The Zoo's rich history and its emergence as a modern-day research and conservation center are covered in stories and fact-filled sidebars illustrated with vintage black-and-white images from the archives and modern color photos"--Provided by publisher.

Numerous authors have expressed concern that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential risk to humanity. These authors argue that we might build AI which is vastly intellectually superior to humans (a ‘superintelligence’), and which optimizes for goals that strike us as morally bad, or even irrational. Thus, this argument assumes that a superintelligence might have morally bad goals. However, according to some views, a superintelligence necessarily has morally adequate goals. This might be the case either because abilities for moral (...) reasoning and intelligence mutually depend on each other, or because moral realism and moral internalism are true. I argue that the former argument misconstrues the view that intelligence and goals are independent, and that the latter argument misunderstands the implications of moral internalism. Moreover, the current state of AI research provides additional reasons to think that a superintelligence could have bad goals. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the truth-functional interpretation of the logical connective of the material implication. The importance of such clarification lies in the fact that it allows avoiding the supposed paradoxes introduced by C. I. Lewis (1918). I argue that an adequate understanding of the history and purposes of logic is enough to dissolve them away. The defense is based on an exposition of propositional compositionalism. To compare, I also present Stalnaker’s (1968) alternative that seeks to (...) explain the implicit concept of conditionality of conditionals assertions. In order to reinforce my aim I expound the twelve different meanings of ‘implication’ stated by Corcoran (1993) in order to hold that a proper understanding of these meanings allows us to avoid ambiguities and confusions. Finally, I expect to show that despite the possible alternatives, compositionalism is still the best explanation for the truth-functionality account of logical connectives. (shrink)

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Drawing upon Hebrew Scripture and post-biblical Jewish sources, this article adumbrates the possibility of a humanism that does not require a universal metanarrative sponsored by the Enlightenment. A humanistic ethic, it is argued, can be nurtured by the principle of neighborly love, which with aid of insights from modern Jewish thinkers - Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas - the author understands as an attitude of being attentive to the existential and material needs of the other. /// (...) Recorrendo às fontes da Escritura Hebraica e do Judaísmo pós-bíblico, o presente artigo pretende clarificar a possibilidade de um humanismo que não fique dependente de uma meta-narrativa universal enraizada no projecto do Iluminismo. O autor defende que uma ética humanística pode ser apoiada pelo princípio do amor ao próximo, o qual, mediante o recurso às intuições dos pensadores judaicos mais recentes - Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, e Emmanuel Levinas - o autor compreende como sendo uma atitude que consiste em permanecer atento às necessidades materiais e existenciais do outro. (shrink)

Sensorimotor enactivism is the view that the content and the sensory modality of perceptual experience are determined by implicit knowledge of lawful regularities between bodily movements and patterns of sensory stimulation. A proponent of the explanatory argument for sensorimotor enactivism holds that this view is able to provide an intelligible explanation for why certain material realizers give rise to certain perceptual experiences, while rival accounts cannot close this “explanatory gap”. However, I argue that the notion of the “material realizer” of (...) perceptual experience is ambiguous. On a narrow construal, the explanatory gap cannot be bridged, not even by enactivism. On a wide construal, enactivism gets a grip on the explanatory gap, but to the same extent do established theories of consciousness. Thus, on both horns of the dilemma, the explanatory power of enactivism is not superior to more traditional theories of conscious experience. (shrink)